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Comment by mrshoe | Hacker News Reader

In fact, Facebook lists already do everything he praises Circles for in this article. They might even do a little more (e.g. share with List A, excluding anyone in List B).

As he correctly notes later in the article, the lists feature is not prominent on Facebook, and therefore few use it (or maybe few people actually want it?). But it definitely will not require a major architectural overhaul by Facebook.

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> In fact, Facebook lists already do everything he praises Circles for in this article.

Having used both Google+'s Circles and Facebook's lists, a lot of people are missing the point. Sure, Facebook's lists may be capable of some or even all of the functionality of Google+'s Circles, but that's not addressing the important difference in functionality between the two.

Google+ has clearly been designed with Circles in mind. It's easy to tell just from using Google+ that the Circles idea is a core architectural component and not just something that was tacked on. Facebook's lists pale in comparison. They're clearly an afterthought and not many people use them.

I extensively used one of Facebook's private groups to mimic the new functionality in Google's Circles with a group of my close friends for about three - four months and, while it was adequate, it's nowhere near as polished or fluid as my experience with Circles. It's really no contest.

> But it definitely will not require a major architectural overhaul by Facebook.

To those who are saying that it would be trivial to implement Circles functionality on top of Facebook, I sincerely doubt it. It'd be like saying that it wouldn't take much to for Blackberry to adopt the same UI polish of iOS. It's comparing a system that has clearly evolved (BlackBerry, Facebook) to one that has been designed (iOS, Google+).

I think us nerds to be careful about just comparing Google+ and Facebook on what features they have, lest we need to be reminded of: "Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

Facebook Friend Lists are far more powerful than Google Circles and Facebook Groups are an entirely different beast. At an architectural level Facebook Lists are a core feature. They even had them front and center for a few years as they asked you to populate them by "how do you know this person?" when you added them as a friend. The problem is that no one wanted to use them so they were gradually phased out of the UI.

Almost reminds me of how Microsoft promoted .NET as being a runtime capable of running code generated from multiple languages. The JVM had always had this feature but it was underutilized and somewhat obscure. After the .NET launch, it took a while of explaining that the JVM could run other languages besides Java before it became widely known in the programming community.

I think it had to do with the fact that the CLR actually had multiple language support early on and it took Java some time to get there (with Scala and Clojure).

"The problem is that no one wanted to use them so they were gradually phased out of the UI."

That basically says to me that not enough emphasis was placed on designing the site around the feature. I think that's what Google's done right in their case, circles are front-and-center and not just another feature in an already feature-cluttered UI.

A prime example of a fundamental feature of facebook is the concept of a single wall that all of my friends can post to. Even if I could figure out how to prevent my work/church/family friends and my college/bar-hopping/trouble-making friends from seeing each others posts to my wall, I'm still faced with an uncomfortable UI that displays posts from both groups at once. That aspect of the UI alone doesn't help me feel secure about privacy on FB.

Same thing happens in your stream on Google+.

This may be a stupid question: How do you use lists?

I made some lists with circlehack.com. But on Facebook I don't see a way to share something with a list. I am puzzled...?

You need to have lists populated. I add people to lists as I friend them so my lists are all set. From the homepage, click "friends" in the left column, then "manage friends" button in the centre. Hover over a friend and you can "Edit lists" to add or remove them from lists (at http://www.facebook.com/friends/edit/).

Once you have friends in lists then you use lists like you would an email list. From the homepage click to write a status and you'll see next to the "share" button an icon (which for me is a padlock) that allows access to the functions to limit sharing. My default is "friends of friends". Choose to "customise" your shared status and you can enter either a friends name or a list name, start typing and it auto fills.

There are other situations when you can use friend lists too around the site, I think pretty much everywhere you can enter a friends name. For example if you do @listname in one of your statuses then everyone in the list will get that status in their news feed. You can activate online chat for only members of a list for example.

HTH.

More than targeted sharing, what I like about Google Circles is that I can filter my news feed/stream by a circle.

Is there similar functionality for facebook lists? I can't find how to do so...

Thanks!

Click Recent News, select a Friend List from the drop down.

You press the Lock button under your post then select who you want to share with even who you don't want to share with. Customize gives you access to the all the features.

With G+, I make a conscious decision about privacy every time I post something. Every post I decide where it goes. G+ keeps it front and center. Facebook has it 4 clicks hidden away and then doesn't make it obvious you can include lists when it says "These People: Specific People".

I have never used lists on Facebook when posting (I have used them for messaging though... which I found annoying due to the limit to the number of people in a list).

Circles, on the other had, I use with every post I make.

I'1l just believe in Circles when I find a non nerd user who has subdirectories in their My Documents folder.

Yes, it would because Google+ following system is asynchronous, kind of like Twitter (though not quit). Facebook doesn't work like that, and it would be a MAJOR change if they implemented it. I think a lot of users that are used to how Facebook currently works would be very upset about it.

Bingo. Thus the people wondering if Google isn't a bigger threat to Twitter than Facebook.

The real issue for Facebook is that, if Google+ is successful (my feel is that it's a strategic fire-break to stop Facebook's possible domination of social search), it limits the ways Facebook can additionally monetize their social network.

Google+ doesn't need to fail for Facebook to survive, but it does hem in their possible revenue growth.

Now twitter...

asynchronous --> asymmetric

Deleted comment

duh! fixed.

My problem with lists is it acts as a separate group rather than a filter. I want to see everyone's posts who is in a list. Instead I only see posts that have been specifically shared with a list.

With circles, it automatically filters my stream without anyone having to post to my list or group. They just share it with me.

This is a subtle but important difference for me.

People don't post to a list on Facebook. Your friends don't even know they're in a list, like Circles. You can filter your stream by lists, but it's not exposed on the UI and you have to do some URL mingling.

Recent News -> Select Friend List from drop down.

At least at some point you could view the news feed of people in a given friend list in Facebook too.

Recent News -> Select friend list.

Lists are not available on the Android app (not sure about iOS).

I think the reason it isn't prominent is because it's not the direction the company wants to go. Every since Twitter became popular Facebook moved to become more like Twitter; more public and less private. They stuck the list feature in to placate those complaining about the removal of privacy but they never really wanted people to use it. Now with Google+ taking over the area of private social networking it would be interesting to see if Facebook does an about face and goes back in this direction.

it's not the direction the company wants to go

Nor has it ever been. While lists might appear to work now, I would not at all be surprised if lists are a leaky abstraction with all sorts of holes that would require the codebase rearchitecting that the original story believes.

When you have such a fundamental design decision baked into everything you've ever done, it can't change overnight. Perhaps they've been working on it for months or years, but certainly its only in the last year that anyone has been talking about this problem earnestly.

And therein lies one of the biggest issues with Facebook. They offer a lot of features that are hidden away, deliberately released without much fanfare, and are difficult to find.

exactly. i think more people would use the lists if it were a more prominent feature. with G+, they are center stage, so people can easily interface with them.

They used to be more prominent. They were "hidden" only after it turned out that people didn't like classifying their friends. Either they just did it wrong, or Google will discover the same thing with Circles.

(I already find myself pretty much just putting everyone in one of two circles now.)

interesting, I don't remember them ever being very prominent. maybe that's just me not paying attention to the software I use :)

I'm not sure if Google will experience the same thing with Circles. I think what will happen (enter speculative mode) is there will be a large group that LOVES classifying their friends like this, and they will stick with G+. Another large group will HATE it, find it extremely annoying/pointless (possibly because of only using one or two circles, like you mentioned), and maybe stick with FB. Either way, people will most likely end up with an account on both, using one actively and one passively.

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